Southern USA
After making landfall on Saturday 23 October as a category 5 hurricane, Hurricane Patricia weakened rapidly as it moved over the mountains of Mexico. Hurricane Patricia became the deepest hurricane on record with minimum central pressure of 879hPa, beating the previous record of 882hPa set by Hurricane Wilma in the Atlantic in 2005. The remnants of Patricia formed an area of low pressure over the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend and brought intense rainfall to the southern states of the USA. Severe flood impacts were reported in parts of Texas and Louisiana with up to 500mm of rain reported. New Orleans reported 220mm in the last 24 hours with an unconfirmed total of 457mm in 24 hours at Corsicana, Texas. This torrential rain also led to delays at the USA Grand Prix. The eastern fringes of Texas, along with Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas are at risk of receiving another 100-200mm of rainfall today (Monday) bringing further flooding impacts. Looking ahead, further heavy rainfall will affect areas of the Pacific coast of Mexico that were impacted by Patricia; Texas and Louisiana from Friday with another 200mm or more of rain. This will exacerbate the current flooding in these regions.

Map showing rainfall totals across Mexico and the southern states of the USA

Eastern Mediterranean
A spell of very unsettled weather is affecting the eastern Mediterranean bringing heavy rainfall, localised flooding to the Levant coasts along with reports of baseball-sized hail in parts of Egypt. This weather will continue to move eastwards across countries such as Syria, Israel, Lebanon and into Iraq and Iran over the coming days with daily rainfall likely to approach 100mm. This will lead to a risk of flash flooding and may be accompanied by further damaging hail.

Sri Lanka and SE India

Heavy rain associated with the northeasterly monsoon has brought some high rainfall totals across Sri Lanka with 89mm recently recorded in 3 hours. There is a risk of a tropical depression forming in the southern Bay of Bengal this week which would bring further very heavy rainfall across Sri Lanka and SE India. Some places may see up to 200mm a day, with an event total of up to 600mm. This will lead to significant flood and landslide risk across this region, with the large Indian city of Chennai and Sri Lanka capital Colombo at risk.

Eastern Canada/NE USA and eastern Europe

Over next weekend and early next week, a cold plunge of air is likely to dip southwards across the eastern provinces of Canada and far northeastern states of the USA such as Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachussetts. Daytime temperatures may only just rise above freezing in what will be a fairly early cold snap for the regions.

Cold air will also sink southwards from the arctic to bring an early taste of winter to eastern Europe affecting Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and also western Russia.

2 Responses to World weather this week

It seems to me that there was an awful lot more fuss made for a record breaking category 5 Hurricane hitting the Mexican coast with 92 mm of rain, than there was for the good old fashion extratropical cyclone that it spawned which dropped a massive 457 mm of rain over parts of Texas!